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Is Attachment Healthy?

Discussion in 'Family, Friends, and Relationships' started by gloomyra, Feb 11, 2016.

  1. gloomyra

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    I'm trying to working on not being too attached, especially to people. But my question is, is it unhealthy to be too detached?

    I've known people who seemingly have no attachment to anyone. I have one friend whose parents divorced, and his childhood dog died, right in the same week. He told me he wasn't really bothered by it, even though he's spent his whole life with his mom (who moved out, and he decided to live with his emotionally distant dad) and he'd had the dog for years and seemed very close to it. Obviously I'm not him, so I can't say if that's really what he felt or not, but I've known other people who have behaved similarly.

    Someone else I knew, moved to another country and completely dropped contact with family. Anoher friend, woke up one day to find her boyfriend of three years (who she was living with at the time) had dissapeared. She thought he was dead, until several years later he contacted her and told her he "just felt like leaving".

    Is this level of extreme detachment unhealthy? I feel like it's better to have some attachment, so long as you aren't completely reliant on people. Sorry if this isn't the right thread, I didn't know where to post this question.
     
  2. Chip

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    Attachment, as in connection, is not only healthy, we are hardwired for it and there's a lot to indicate it's essentially why we exist.

    Now... clingyness is different from attachment, and isn't healthy. The difference is in the importance of the attachment. Clingy people don't feel happy or whole unless they're attached to someone. And that's incredibly unhealthy, because it means externalizing happiness.

    As for the friends you describe, that level of detachment is numbing and avoiding connection and feelings, and I would argue pretty strongly that it's very unhealthy.
     
  3. gloomyra

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    Thanks! This is what i thought, but I wasn't sure... I think it's unhealthy to depend wholly on any one person, but I also crave a strong connection with people. I am working on my self esteem now, so I won't end up being clingy. I have co-dependency problems within my family (we all have it) and I have to monitor my own feelings to make sure I don't fall into the same trap as many of my family. Quite a few people I know have been in unhappy relationships, because they settled and married someone who wasn't right for them, just because they were afraid of being alone, and I don't want to make the same mistake. But it also didn't seem right to me to be so detached and untrusting that the people in my life made no difference to me at all.